Google is at it again – making sudden decisions and stressing all the people out! This time it’s the featured snippet update. Google is cutting down other URLs from Google’s organic results, that are already listed on the featured snippet part! On January 22, 2020, Google’s Danny Sullivan confirmed on Twitter that webpages that listed on the featured snippet wouldn’t be repeated in the regular organic results on the first page. Until now, the web pages listed on the featured snippet section often will appear on the organic first-page results too.
If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat the listing in the search results. This declutters the results & helps users locate relevant information more easily. Featured snippets count as one of the ten web page listings we show.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 22, 2020
Today, 100% globally.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 22, 2020
Earlier, Google used to give specific URLs two spots on the results showing pages (SERPs), one is where the URL ranked on the featured snippet (AKA position 0), and the second one is in the organic search results section. This will no longer be the case. Now a website URL gets only one chance to appear on a page.
Removing the extra URLs that are already listed on the featured snippet is called deduplication. Google’s SearchLiaison published the following facts about deduplication:
- The duplicate link removal process is called deduplication.
- Change is globally rolled out.
- The change will not affect video snippets at this moment.
- The duplication will not affect interesting finds and top stories.
- The featured snippet URL won’t be listed in the SERP.
- Deduplication affects the exact case URLs listed on the featured snippet.
- It will not affect Google Search Console (GSC) performance reports.
What If You Lost Your Featured Snippet?
Does your website listed on a featured snippet? If yes, does this mean your traffic will decrease? What will happen if your website lost its featured snippets? Can your website be found on the first page of SERP or any other page? A lot of concerns to be addressed!
Sullivan also tweeted about this concern, and as he says:
I would expect so. To be a featured snippet, you had to rank in the top results. Then we elevated. And now we deduplicate. If you don’t get featured, deduplication ends.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 22, 2020
Sullivan’s statement doesn’t assure us that this will be the case, but it’s something that everyone should definitely watch out for!
The change means there’s enough space for websites to rank on page one, especially for the sites that rank on the 11th position of SERPs, as they will move onto page one. Danny Sullivan explains about the net listings on SERP as:
If there’s a featured snippet, it was 11 net listings, 10 unique. Now it is 10 net and unique. If there wasn’t a featured snippet, it was 10 net and unique listings. That’s unchanged.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 22, 2020
Sullivan also tweeted about the query about two featured snippets appearing in the same SERP, in this case, both results will be removed from the SERPs organic results and will only be listed as featured snippets.
Before Google’s featured snippet update, the duplicated results were also shown in the SERPs first page. The below graph illustrates the ranking position of the keywords (approximately 250,000 keywords) that generate a featured snippet on January 22.
Now that Google has deduplicated the results that appeared on the featured snippet, the whole SEO industry wants to know what will happen next!
To address these, an SEO platform called seoClarity conducted a study of traffic fluctuations of URLs that have been in a Featured Snippet for days from January 10 to January 23. Their results are here:
Traffic Implications After Featured Snippet Update
Site owners and SEOs can rest knowing that at least there is no drastic change in the organic search traffic following Google’s January 2020 featured snippet update.
Mark Traphagen, VP of Product Marketing and Training for seoClarity, said to the SEJ that:
“There was no statistically significant difference in organic Google traffic sent to these pages after they lost the duplicate listing on page one, based on an analysis of real traffic data for featured snippet listings across multiple industries.”
However, there were some insignificant traffic variations discovered in some specific industries. Still, these data were very similar to the day over day variations (January 22nd Wednesday – January 23rd Thursday) from the previous week. We are still not in a point to make big decisions as the data is inadequate and based on a rush experiment:
- Auto industry: Observed a 10% improvement in traffic (searches with informational intent).
- Auto industry: Observed a 15% reduction in traffic (searches with transactional intent).
- Finance industry: Observed a 4% improvement in traffic (searches with informational intent).
- Travel Industry: Observed no change in the traffic (searches with informational intent).
To keep in mind that these data and findings are considered to be minor changes based on a rush data, as the update just rolled on globally, there’s still time for a change. Thus far, this is a good sign for SEOs and site owners, and it will be worth noting if changes remain irrelevant over the coming months or not.
Deduplicating Right-Sidebar Featured Snippets
However, right-sidebar snippets are still something Google plans to remove and move to the main listings.
For the time being, URLs shown in the right-sidebar of Google results will also be shown in the organic SERPs. That means they will appear twice on a single page result, since this is temporary, site owners should monitor their CTR and traffic, for the time being.
How SEO Community Reacted to This
Marie Haynes, Owner, Marie Haynes Consulting Inc.
We rank #1 organically for “eat seo”, but SEMRush has the featured snippet. In this case, it looks like *not* having the featured snippet has caused us to get more clicks. pic.twitter.com/8rzjMRQ8Eh
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) January 23, 2020
Lily Ray, Director of SEO at Path Interactive
More big news on the Featured Snippet-apocalypse:
The right sidebar snippets will be merged into the main column within a month. So if you rank in that panel, you may see big declines in traffic temporarily (esp. from desktop), but get at least a portion of it back later on. https://t.co/yv1TNK8DFH
— Lily Ray ? (@lilyraynyc) January 23, 2020
AJ Kohn, Owner, Blind Five Year Old
Thinking: If de-duping the featured snippet and organic listing helps users by decluttering results wouldn’t de-duping paid and organic listings do essentially the same thing? #seo pic.twitter.com/Kq41kZn4Qd
— AJ Kohn (@ajkohn) January 23, 2020
Google aims to improve search results with each update, especially the core updates. It is too early to make a decision; at this point, what we all could do is testing. If you own a featured snippet, collect data on how many clicks and traffic you have got from the snippet. Then do an experiment to lose your featured snippet to rank on the first page. Monitor your data and compare it with the featured snippet data. In many cases, you can retrieve the featured snippet by reversing the changes made.
Have you already tried this? Did your traffic change? Share your experience in the comments!
